


Down Below

by Kyra_s_Mirror



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Injury, Light Angst, Post-Promised Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 03:58:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18843163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyra_s_Mirror/pseuds/Kyra_s_Mirror
Summary: Internal conflict plague the General and his captain during the reconstruction of Ishval. An incident finally allows them to put everything to rest.





	Down Below

**Author's Note:**

> I'm terrible at summaries.

The literal ground giving way beneath their feet was the last thing they had ever expected the desert to throw at them.

When one of the exploration teams had come back reporting the discovery of a spring in the area, locating and exploiting the potential aquifer had become an absolute priority. Which is how they had found themselves in the desert, a fair distance from any of the Ishvalan settlements that peppered the area. While they tried to be physically present on Ishvalan grounds as little as possible, the relative isolation of the area had meant that the General had opted to oversee the work himself.  
The dowser they had enlisted for this job had traced the path of the spring to a rocky plateau that broke the monotony of the landscape before retiring for the night. They would keep looking for the much needed source of water in the morning, leaving the team to overnight in the tents they had prepared for the occasion.

*********************************************************************************

He’d endured the beating of the sun on his head all day but now that it was almost set, he could feel the air cool around him, reminding him of the harshness of the war, when his flames made the day even hotter and he’d shiver awake most nights, from nightmares and cold.  
Roy decided to escape the feelings this place never failed to evoke in him by going for a walk in the rocky terrain that, most likely, hid the aquifer. It would be, he hoped, the first step in giving the Ishbalans a generous amount of autonomy from Amestris and the military upon which they were currently reliant for water. He wasn’t able, however, to escape from Hawkeye as he came out of his tent to find her nearby, the look in her eyes telling him she shared his discomfort of the desert. While he wanted her close, the turmoil that had been growing inside him since the Promised day made their interactions difficult. Like he was fighting every instinct in his body, two widely different reasoning trying to win a tired battle in his head about her.

Regardless, she was only a step behind him as he carefully made his way on the uneven ground. Which meant that she was also surprised when the ground opened up under his feet and they were falling.

*********************************************************************************

Riza groaned as she regained consciousness, momentarily fuzzy as to how she had ended up on the cold hard ground. The pain that shot through her skull and the quiet pulsing of her left ankle soon reminded her of the ground giving way under them and the fall she’d taken into darkness.

She turned and chanced a look above her head. The sky she could see through the medium sized hole was dark and filled with stars.  
“Shit!”  
She assessed her situation, starting with her head. Her probing revealed a nasty bump at the back of her head near her ear but she couldn’t feel any blood, thankfully. She probably had a bad concussion, though, to have been unconscious for...an hour?...maybe two. She’d have to be careful about that. Otherwise, her ankle felt sprained but not broken. All in all, she’d been lucky, she thought, as she estimated the height of their fall to about two stories…  
_They_  
“Shit….General?”  
There was no answer to her call, so she tried to locate him in the half light. It took her a moment, even if the stars provided some illumination. He had been wearing his dark coat against the coming cold and it was several minutes before she spotted a spot of white and a sudden softness in the otherwise jagged terrain a few meters away.  
She carefully made her way to his side, dizzy from the blow to her head and trying to avoid pressure on her ankle.  
She smelled the iron in the air as she finally dropped to the ground next to him. Hurriedly, she felt around for his head and finally was able to put her hand on his neck, checking for his pulse. It was strong and steady and she sighed in relief. The ground around him was littered with rocks and she wasn’t surprised when she found a wet spot on his skull and smelled the iron on her hand as she brought the sticky wetness to her nose.  
She sighed again, in frustration this time. She didn’t have any medical supply, no light, no rope, nothing to help them get out of this predicament. Nobody out there would be fool enough to look for them after sunset, not in this terrain, not if they knew what was good for them. She needed something to put against that wound and she didn’t have a lot of options. She started to try and figure out which material she was more likely to be able to tear a piece of and her choice settled on her shirt. While either of their shirts would have worked, the General was laying in a position that would require her to move him to access it and his dead weight would be very difficult for her to move. And she’d rather not aggravate any injuries she wasn’t aware of, like broken bones, if she didn’t have to.

She started tugging at her shirt, distracting herself from her thoughts. Thankfully, there was enough material there for a decently sized dressing. The ripping sound was loud in the silence of the cavern and, quietly, she hoped there was nothing besides them down here. Taking the material, she carefully felt around his head again and started wrapping the makeshift bandage around it, fumbling a bit when she had to lift his head to do so.  
She allowed herself a moment of worry. The wound wasn’t deep, but it was close to his temple and he probably had a pretty bad concussion as well. She checked his pulse again, calming herself with the knowledge that it was still strong under her fingers.

She finally sat back on the ground, alone with her thoughts. She reasoned that at worst, they would be stuck here until he woke. He would probably be able to think of some way to get them out of here with his alchemy. He had been experimenting with it, she knew, and the expansion of his capabilities he had acquired since being forced through the portal and she had no doubt that he’d have a solution for their predicament. All she had to do was wait.

Waiting, unfortunately, allowed her thoughts to wander, something that she tried to avoid when they were called in the desert. Mainly, she thought of the sideway glances and the fear she had seen in the eyes of the few Ishvalan workers they had talked to earlier this day. She couldn’t blame their reaction, not at all, but she hoped the work they were doing here would help transform their quiet hatred into the cautious comprehension they had somehow managed to instill in a few of the members of their council.  
She shivered in the cool air. Temperature dropped quickly and steeply this deep in the desert. She’d been carrying her coat, still warm from the day’s heat and she hadn’t come across it so far and her thin, and now ripped, cotton top was doing little to keep her from the chill that was settling in her bones.  
She sighed. _Of all the things._  
She brought her knees closer to her chest and wrapped her arms around it to preserve heat but she knew it would eventually be futile and soon enough, she was shivering constantly. She thought of the ways she could warm herself but most involved far more movement than was possible with her sprain. That only left….  
She sighed, finishing her annoyed breath with one word.  
“Shit”  
There was nothing to it, she didn’t want to freeze to death and it was the only sensible way she was going to keep warm  
She unwrapped herself from her position, shivering, and started moving the general so she could move him on his side. She started pushing at his shoulder, trying to turn him.  
“God, you’re heavy.” she said to the air.  
_At least this is warming me up._  
It took her almost a minute to turn him around enough that she would be able to slip inside his coat. She paused then, catching her breath and taking a moment to settle her nerves. She’d been avoiding being close to him for several months now and there had been a few incidents that had made her aware that he was doing the same thing. The Promised days had solidified a lot of the feelings she had had for him and confirmed the feelings she had not been entirely sure he felt and things had gotten...complicated. Their work wasn’t done but they couldn’t go back and shove back inside all the baggage that had suddenly spilled out. The stalemate had been going on for months now and making the whole thing worse because she needed to huddle for warmth was the last thing she wanted to do.  
She slipped herself inside his coat before she could talk herself out of it and shifted close enough that his warmth would seep into her skin. She bit her lip as her head flashed the unbidden thought that it was almost like he was sleeping. She took a steadying breath, chasing that image from her head as she warmed up, and let his ever present scent of smoke and sandalwood lull her into safety.

She woke with a start, not remembering when she had dozed off.  
The slight movement of the body laying next to her drew her out of her sleep in an instant. She lifted her eyes and was greeted by the unfocused and blinking ones of her superior officer.  
“General?”  
He blinked a few more times then groaned, a hand going to his head as he was probably made painfully aware of his injury.  
“Hawkeye? What happened?”  
She swallowed, the hand that he had lifted to his head had come back down and settled somewhere between her hip and her waist, which she attributed to his disorientation.  
“Ground gave way under our weight, sir. We fell, maybe 6 or 8 meters. I believe you hit your head on a rock. I bandaged it but I couldn’t assess any other injury in the dark.”  
His eyes finally focused.  
“Are you alright?”  
Her eyes softened in the dark. She admired his consideration for everyone else’s well being before his own but sometimes it made her want to shake him.  
“Mild concussion and a sprained ankle. Nothing I can’t handle. What about you?”  
She felt him shrug in the dark.  
“Apart from my head, everything feels fine.”  
She nodded, a bit flustered. He still hadn’t moved his hand away.  
He cleared his throat  
“Captain…I…”  
In the half light, she was able to see how tense he had become.  
“Sir…” She started.  
“...I’m not...I’d like…”  
She heard him sigh. She hadn’t seen him this unsure of himself since they were teenagers.  
“...I was wondering how it is you found yourself inside my coat, Captain.”  
She felt the heat rise in her cheeks.  
“I lost my coat in the fall, sir, and you know how the weather is at night in this place. I didn’t find a better solution than huddling for warmth. I’m sorry if that was...inappropriate.”  
The hand that had been resting on her side suddenly retreated.  
“Warmth. Right. That makes sense. It was perfectly alright, Captain.”  
She couldn’t help but hear the hint of bitter disappointment in his voice.  
Silence stretched between them, tangible and uncomfortable, one that had become more and more frequent. The more it lasted, the more her frustration built and their usually easy relationship was getting more and more uncomfortable as a result. It needed to stop.  
“We need to talk.”  
His eyes focused on hers for a moment, somehow reading in them what she meant, before he lowered them away.  
“I know.”  
“It’s starting to affect our work.” she continued.  
“I know.”  
His short answers sounded defeated, somehow.  
“Roy...”  
His eyes returned sharply to hers, widening slightly in surprise. She hadn’t used his first name since her father had found the familiarity inappropriate, years ago, when he finally realised she was becoming a young woman and he had become _Mister_ Mustang then.  
“...Talk to me.”  
She saw him hesitate, biting his bottom lip.  
“I don’t want to break a promise.”  
“I’m inviting you to break that promise.”  
Silence again, but much shorter this time as he finally took her invitation.  
“For so long, I was set on my goal and I thought I knew the path I was walking and then, that day…”  
“A lot happened that day” She agreed.  
“...Everything was snuffed away in a second and I realised I was a fool.”  
She frowned.  
“How so?”  
She saw him think a moment and then hesitate.  
“I’ve been putting all my eggs in the same basket. If Marcoh hadn’t offered the stone, I would have been left with nothing to keep me up. I would have been discharged and I would have had to find something else to do with myself. In those few hours, after the dust had settled and I was left alone in the command zone, I realised I had very little idea of what else I could be doing.”  
“Roy….” She wanted to remind him that everything had turned out alright.  
“No, let me finish.”  
He took a steadying breath.  
“While I sat there, in the dark, all I could think about is that you almost died because of my goals and that if that was the price to reach them, it was too high and I didn’t really want to get to the top without you. And now I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t want you to leave your post, I need you here, but having you here also means you’re out of reach.”  
Her heart was beating hard in her chest and she was about to open her mouth and say something to set him back onto his goal but she was silenced by his hand cupping her cheek, his thumb gently tracing the line of her jaw.  
“I set out to reach a goal but, in truth, that goal has become just as much about being able to erase the sad look in your eyes when you think about the past. On hard days, I keep fighting because of you. I...I love you, Riza.”  
Those words. She had wanted to hear them for so long but just like he said, they were impossible. She had known a long time ago why she was here.  
She shuffled closer so that she could press her forehead against his, regardless of the bandage between them, and their nose together, mirroring his position and putting a hand on his neck, thumbing his jaw at his ear.  
“I love you too.”  
He smiled then, a smile she hadn’t seen in a long time and he pushed a few stray hair from her face before settling his hand back at her jawline.  
“I want to tell say “To hell with the rules” but I don’t think you’ll stand for that.”  
She bit her lip, thinking.  
“I don’t know. I’m not overly fond of all the military’s rules.”  
“Oh? What are you…”  
He never got to finish his thought as she kissed him. He quickly recovered from his surprise and returned it eagerly, his lips soft and firm against hers, a barely heard groan escaping his throat. His hand left her face and settled into the small of her back, pressing her into him, and igniting a fluttering sensation deep in her stomach. She chased that feeling until she ran out of breath, relishing in the way his lips moved against hers.  
They parted reluctantly, breathing hard.  
“Please tell me this is going somewhere because I don’t think I can just shelve it and pretend like it didn’t happen.”  
She bit her bottom lip around a smile.  
“It would be risky.”  
They were still really close and he pressed his nose against hers.  
“That’s not a no.”  
“It’s not.”  
He looked at her for a moment, deciphering what that answer entails, and she felt the minute change in the pressure he was putting on the small of her back as he shifted and kissed her. It was her turn to make a sound into it as she was taken in by its intensity.  
_I don’t think I could shelve that either._  
The tension was really high between them when they parted and Roy cleared his throat suddenly in the shadows.  
“Alright. So where do we go from here?”  
Riza thought about it for a moment.  
“How about we make sure you don’t have any other injuries first? And then we can talk about coming up with some new rules while we wait for daylight”  
A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.  
“That sounds like a plan”.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think!


End file.
